The World Series Landslide No One Expected

Cody Ross and Juan Uribe were among those who made the kind of blue-state incursion into Texas Monday night that probably won’t be repeated today.

Juan Marichal couldn’t do it, but Madison Bumgarner could. Willie Mays and Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda and Barry Bonds couldn’t, either, but Travis Ishikawa and Nate Schierholtz and Juan Uribe and Cody Ross have. While the San Francisco Giants have fielded some great players and great teams since heading to the West Coast in 1958, the team had been without a World Series champion since 1954 – until Monday, that is.

In Monday’s Game 5, behind the same great pitching and just-good-enough hitting that carried the team along its improbable course, the Giants brought San Francisco its first World Series title. Series MVP Edgar Renteria’s seventh-inning, three-run homer was all the offense San Francisco needed, as the Texas Rangers – arguably the best offensive team in baseball during the regular season – were baffled once again by Giants pitching in a 3-1 loss at the Ballpark in Arlington. Rangers fans went home sad, Giants fans went out partying, and baseball pundits were confused, to say the least. Despite – or because of – a remarkably unremarkable lineup, the Giants became one of the most unexpected and endearing World Series champions in recent memory. Or, as the Journal’s Jason Gay more concisely put it in a postgame tweet, “It’s always nice when the weirdest team wins.”

There was nothing weird about how the Giants won this one, however – the baseball adage of good pitching beating good hitting has never seemed truer than it did as Matt Cain, Bumgarner and Game 5 starter Tim Lincecum silenced the Rangers’ bats. But while his masterful Game 5 showing was a fitting capper for Lincecum’s love affair with the city of San Francisco, the evening – and the World Series MVP – finally belonged to Renteria. His homer marked the second Series-winning hit of his career, with the first coming back in 1997, when he was the 21-year-old shortstop for the Florida Marlins. “It’s not the ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ but it’s the next best thing for this generation of Giants fans,” Yahoo’s David Brown writes. “It’s actually better – The Giants didn’t merely win the pennant, they won it all.”

Coming as they do after one of the worst seasons of his career, Renteria’s heroics with the bat have something of That October Magic about them. But Tim Lincecum’s dominance on the mound was very much in keeping with his excellence throughout the postseason. After scuffling to an ERA in the high sevens and an 0-5 record in August, Lincecum turned things around in time for the biggest games of his career. If it can ever be said of a dazzling eight-inning, 10-strikeout effort in the deciding game of a World Series, Lincecum’s outing was, almost, predictable. “There was no doubt, there was only Tim Lincecum, on the mound, reaching for history,” Tim Kawakami writes in the San Jose Mercury News. “And there was nobody else the Giants would ever – now or in their franchise history – want pitching this game than Lincecum.” He might be a goofball – and certainly looked like one when he arrived at Game 5 in a George Will-inspired ensemble – but “The Freak” is also, undoubtedly, an ace.

And while the Giants team that won it all is indeed kind of weird – from robustly bearded closer Brian Wilson’s on-field audition for a Just For Men box cover to the assortment of lesser oddballs who comprise the rest of the roster – they’re also strangely likeable. “As a baseball fan (as opposed to a Giants fan), it’s really easy to enjoy this team’s success,” ESPN’s Rob Neyer writes. “The Giants wear classic uniforms in a beautiful ballpark. Their roster is studded with fascinating players. Their manager was forced to make any number of tough decisions down the stretch and into the postseason, and nearly all of them worked brilliantly. This one’s for the fans who love the Giants, mostly. But there’s plenty left over for the rest of us, too.”

* * *

Randy Moss is a great wide receiver and a complicated dude. Over the course of Moss’s NFL career, the manifest truth of the former assertion has generally helped smooth over the complications created by the second, if only for a while. Even casual NFL watchers know that, sooner or later, Moss’s difficult-person status has tripped him up at each of his NFL stops. But even the most avowed Moss pessimist couldn’t have foreseen just how quickly Moss managed to burn his bridges after being traded back to his first NFL team by New England four weeks ago.

Moss delivered a spotty effort in his return to Foxboro on Sunday in a 28-18 Vikings loss. While Yahoo’s Chris Chase delivers a less-strained-than-you’d-think explication of how one bit of Mossian loafing led to Brett Favre’s injury, that intermittent on-field effort is nothing new for Moss. But the receiver’s bizarre post-game press conference on Sunday broke new ground even by Randy Moss standards. It began with Moss promising to avoid answering sportswriters’ questions in favor of interviewing himself, included some passive-aggressive semi-criticism of his coaching staff, and repeatedly dissolved into a rambling paean to the Patriots. And yet it was only the beginning of what became Monday’s strangest and most surprising story.

After Sunday’s loss, Moss apparently declined to return to Minnesota with the team. On Monday, one strange month after the team swapped a 2011 third-round pick for the future Hall of Famer, the Vikings announced that they would place Moss on waivers for the purpose of releasing him. In the Los Angeles Times, Sam Farmer writes that Minnesota’s bet on Moss has been just one of several gloriously misguided busts this season. Others were not so sanguine.

“Moss just did to the Vikings what the Patriots feared he would do to them at some point this season – create the kind of internal problem that can’t be smoothed over or minimized,” Sports Illustrated’s Don Banks writes. “It all but forced the organization to cut ties with the talented but mercurial veteran. … All told, the Vikings got 13 catches for 174 yards and two touchdowns out of Moss in four games. And one giant dose of embarrassment.”

* * *

Maurice Lucas, who died Sunday at the age of 58 after a two-year battle with bladder cancer, was the owner of one of the most complicated legacies in NBA history. Known as “The Enforcer” during his playing career, Lucas was the more physical complement to Bill Walton in the frontcourt of the 1977 NBA champion Portland Trail Blazers. But as the Portland Oregonian’s Jason Quick notes in his tribute to the brawny forward, Lucas was much more than just an intimidator, on and off the court.

Tip of the Fix cap to reader Stephen J. Patnode.

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Comments (5 of 11)

My fellow Giants fans have put it well! The Giants came together and played as a true team should! When one player struggled, another picked it up. And as the first commenter noted, it was unexpected by a lot of people (especially those Fox announcers) because to them, the Giants looked like a bunch of misfits who weren't good enough to win it all. But to those who follow Giants Baseball, we had faith in these guys and in the decisions made by management, and we KNEW we'd have this Championship sooner rather than later. Frankly, I called Posey Rookie of the Year over Jason Heyward back in early August; you just gotta BELIEVE.

I've been waiting my whole life to see this happen for a team I've been calling "MINE" since I can remember! And it felt SO good to watch them win it from LA (yes, enemy territory) and to see my non-baseball-following friends get into Giants Baseball and start rooting for them! Ahhh... I cannot wait til next season! Hopefully I'll be able to watch the playoffs from HOME next year, and hopefully, I'll be at next year's parade! (Yes, I still got faith in my boys!!)
San Francisco Giants: 2010 World Series Champions. Feels so good to say it!

7:51 pm November 2, 2010

David Roth wrote:

Jenny, if I can stick up for the Coastal Media Elites for a moment, it's worth noting that "Freak" and "Misfits" were nicknames the Giants gave each other. Justifiably, charmingly, indelibly -- no argument from me on that one. But they're theirs.

5:14 pm November 2, 2010

JENNY - PALO ALTO, CA wrote:

The Giants are NOT a bunch of 'freak's, "misfits', and other derogative names that sports writers and others have nailed on them. The are a great group made up of wonderful, talented, 'members-of-a-team'. They win the top prize for the term 'team'. And Californians - kooky, staid, liberal, conservative, Republican (yes, there are plenty here), Democrat, greenies - pick-an-adjective you want, all love them. There isn't a T-shirt or cap left in town. Can't wait until next season.

3:25 pm November 2, 2010

Orange and Black wrote:

"THE FREAK" "THE NINJA ASSASSIN" "THE MISFITS"

2:40 pm November 2, 2010

Christopher Springmann wrote:

Gotta call this morning from a New York client, congratulating "us" (San Franciscans) on the World Series victory. She said, "Gosh, they must be dancing in the streets out there," to which I replied, "Yeah, those who can still stand up!" From the San Francisco CHRONICLE: Willie Mays, surrounded by a half-dozen friends, had to leave the room after watching the final out, Brian Wilson striking out Nelson Cruz. "I had to get out of here for a minute because I'm not used to getting emotional like this."

"Oh, man, I don't get overly excited about baseball, but looking at these kids and how excited they were, I had some tears in my eyes, because you never know, this might be the last time something like this happens to some of these kids. It's a wonderful feeling for me, and I'm sure it's a wonderful feeling for these kids and their families."

Mr. Mays was there in 1954 as the winner, but also in 1962, losing to the Yankees in seven.

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